Twenty three are injured after lava crashes through boat roof
Twenty three people have been injured after a volcanic explosion sent molten rock crashing through the roof of a sightseeing boat off Hawaii’s Big Island,
They were aboard a tour boat that takes visitors to see lava plunging into the ocean from the long-erupting Kilauea volcano that has been vigorously shooting lava from a new vent in the ground for the past two months.
Some of those explosions can be so tiny they are hard to see. But when the conditions are right, much larger explosions send molten rock and other debris high into the air, according to US Geological survey.
Firefighters said the lava punctured the boat’s roof, leaving a gaping hole.
A woman in her 20s was in serious condition with a broken thigh bone and was transported to Honolulu for further treatment.
Twenty-two others suffered burns and scrapes, including 12 who were treated at the Hilo hospital and released.
Hawaii tour boat operators plan to continue taking visitors to see lava, but will follow the Coast Guard’s revised policy and stay farther away after molten rock barrel led through the roof of the vessel, injuring 23 people.
The Coast Guard prohibits vessels from getting closer than 300 yards from where the Kilauea volcano’s lava oozes into the sea. The agency had been allowing experienced boat operators to apply for a special license to get closer – up to 50yards – but it stopped allowing those exceptions on Monday morning.
Shane Turpin, the owner and captain of the vessel that was hit, said he never saw the explosion that rained molten rock down on top of his boat.
He and his tour group had been in the area for about 20 minutes making passes of the ocean entry about 500 yards offshore, Turpin said.
He didn’t observe “any major explosions”, so navigated his
vessel to about 250 yards from the lava. “As we were exiting the zone, all of a sudden everything around us exploded,” he said. “It was everywhere.”
Turpin said he had no idea just how big the blast was until he saw video of the event later on shore. “It was immense,” he said. “I had no idea. We didn’t see it.”
Monday’s large blast may also be related to the undersea landscape and the amount of lava being produced by a fissure miles from the coast.
Janet Babb, a geologist with the US Geological Survey, said sometimes molten rock can become encrusted underwater and when that crust breaks large amounts of lava hit the water and create huge steam explosions.
“How high and how far really depends on the vigour of the steam explosion, and that depends on the amount of lava going into the ocean,” Babb said. “Based on a lot of years of observations of ocean entries”, USGS estimates these explo- sions can send debris up to 300 yards in any direction. In a flow that reached the ocean in 2016, the lava “hit a steep slope and was very quickly carried down to deeper parts of the ocean,” Babb said. But the offshore topography of the new ocean entry is shallow, meaning explosions could occur much closer to the surface.
And the volume of lava now entering the ocean is much higher than in previous eruptions, Babb said. The active eruption site is sending as much as 100 cubic meters of lava per second snaking down to the sea. In the 2016-17 flow to the south, there was only about 4 cubic meters per second being erupted.
Turpin, who has lived on the Big Island since 1983, said that he has been observing and documenting these explosions and that this type of activity is new to him. There were no warning signs before the blast, Despite the hazards, several companies operate such tours. The Coast Guard said tour vessels have operated in the area at least 20 years.